DID YOU KNOW? AYSO FUN FACTS

AYSO Helps Kids Turn Into Happy Soccer Players

There are million of kids playing soccer in America — a great outdoor game and fun for the whole family, youth soccer is a great athletic sport — one on with more individual participation than many other team sports. AYSO is one of the founding organizations in the youth soccer world and today helps awaken passion for the beautiful game in over 500,000 players. With 50,000 youth soccer teams around the country, AYSO has a rich history — filled with fun facts.

Youth Soccer News: As the very first AYSO youth soccer program, AYSO’s Core is the foundation for all of AYSO’s other programs, including the new AYSO United program.

Core is also AYSO’s most popular program — the majority of all AYSO players playing in Core.

Based in Southern California, AYSO has helped many professional players — even Landon Donovan — get their start in soccer. AYSO’s player count has grown exponentially and has expanded across the United States.

Everyone knows AYSO’s important Six Philosophies — this is the core of the program:

Everyone Plays®,

Balanced Teams,

Open Registration,

Positive Coaching,

Good Sportsmanship

and, Player Development.

What else is this well-loved program about? Read some fun facts below!

AYSO’s Core program was founded in 1964 in Torrance, California.

AYSO was actually co-founded by Hans Stierle and Bill Hughes with the support of Ted McClean, Ralph Acosta and Steve Erdos in 1964 — just so kids could play soccer.

The program started out with only 125 players.

Stierle organized youth soccer games for what was then called the Los Angeles Soccer Club, a boys youth soccer club in the North Hollywood area of LA and the teams played against other local clubs.

Eric Wynalda,Paul Caligiuiri and Sigi Schmid are members of the AYSO Hall of Fame.